John Niedermeyer is a Brooklyn-based design manager and internets enthusiast at <a href="http://buzzfeed.com">BuzzFeed</a>. Previously, he was a digital designer and editor at <a href="http://nytimes.com">The New York Times</a>.

The Times has a near­ly glow­ing review of Pagan Kennedy’s new book, a his­tor­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the African-Amer­i­can mis­sion­ary William Hen­ry Shep­pard. Kennedy used to write this sil­ly ‘zine’ called Pagan’s Head in the 80s, from a crap­py lit­tle house on Far­ring­ton Street, in my neigh­bor­hood. 666 and I swapped books by Pagan Kennedy, and I always found her writ­ing quirky and fun. I can’t believe she’s get­ting good reviews for writ­ing some­thing more aca­d­e­m­ic…